New Directions Cello Festival is an annual festival for cellists who want to learn from fairly well-known non-classical cellists and each other. I have nothing against classical music, but opportunities for cellists who study jazz, Celtic music, etc. from cellists who are established in those respective genres are quite limited. The positive experiences I had at the 2006 festival made me want to attend subsequent ones, but I had to wait until 2009 for my next chance. The format of the 2009 festival was very much like the 2006 one - one has a selection between 2-3 classes during the daytime, with lunch breaks, and concerts on Friday and Saturday nights to be followed by informal jam sessions.
Here are the classes I chose for Friday Afternoon:
Free Improvisation
Instructor: Joel Cohen
I unfortunately botched up my recording of this class. My Tascam DP-004 apparently has to "backup" the song from the DP-004's MTR partition on the SD card to the FAT partition. It took forever to backup the recording of this class. I think it's because I totally maxed out the card quickly by recording two tracks at once. Silly oversight on my part to not get a 16GB SD card - I used the pathetically tiny 1GB card that came with it. What I recall of this class was being given simple parameters with which to improvise - usually a tonal center like C or G, a rhythm, and a parameter specific to one's group (class was divided into groups at some point). So the improvisation wasn't 100% "free" as Derek Bailey would call it, but there was still a lot to room to try ideas.
Shetland Tune
Instructor: Abby Newton
The class was pretty much devoted to one tune from the Shetland region of Scotland. I was painfully reminded of how slow I am in picking up a new song completely by ear. I had the same problem when I took a class taught by Natalie Haas, another cellist specializing in Scottish music. Still, it was interesting to get a taste of Shetland bowing, which seems to be playing more notes with a down-bow and using the up-bow to accent a particular note. Because my DP-004's SD card was full, I couldn't record a second of this class.
Flying Pizzicato I
Instructor: Stephen Katz
This class introduced Katz's Flying Pizzicato technique for cello. A demo of this technique is here:
Katz is a virtuoso with this technique, which lends itself well to music with a strong rhythmic drive.
Cello Big Band
Director: Joel Cohen
This wasn't really a class, although I personally learned a lot by partipating. Part of NDCF tradition, apparently, is that cellists take time to prepare several pieces for the final concert on Sunday afternoon. Usually some cellists out of the group volunteer to improvise solos where the pieces call for it. I tried to participate back in NDCF 2006, but my sight reading was even worse then than it was as of June 2009. This is where my lack of true classical cello training might be a liability. Anyway, I gained quite a bit of confidence by being a part of Cello Big Band this time around.
I'll continue my NDCF 2009 reporting in a later post.
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